Gamification to increase Customer Engagement in the offline world

Gamification is a great marketing tool to engage the customers. Scratch cards, free tattoos, and other surprise gifts too are a type of gamification and have been there in the market for decades now. New technological advancements have made the gamification more interesting and applicable in many segments of the business, which was not possible earlier. Gamification is now being used for branding, customer retention, increasing employee productivity, teaching new concepts and so on. Gamification is a way to add the fun element by utilization of game mechanics in non-game environments. Gamification does not only help businesses in increasing customer engagement but also in collecting valuable customer behavior data. This data plays an important role in making business strategies, deciding and tweaking product offerings, and future roadmap for the business. Many companies are seeing an increase in customer retention after the application of gamification. As per a study by Harvard Business Review, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. Gamification to engage the offline customers for products There are lots of opportunities to engage online customers with the help of social media and remarketing ads. Brands can show the ads to their prospective customers on each website they visit (thanks to Google). Customer engagement in the offline world was limited to tv commercials, banners, radio etc. But many brands are now using the digital gamification to increase customer engagement in the offline world. Several non-tech businesses are not able to use gamification as they don’t have the expertise in developing and deploying digital technology solutions. And they don’t want to divert their focus from their business (that is making money) to something new. But lagging behind the new technological revolutions can cause even a successful business to lose to new competitors. So the businesses must utilize the third party solutions such as from NeuroTags and use the digital solutions for gamification to increase their customers’ engagement. Gamification to make Loyalty Programs more effective Loyalty programs are a proven way to increase customer retention. Loyalty programs can be more effective if customers can register/redeem the loyalty directly with the brand and eliminate the need for middlemen or physical loyalty cards. To achieve this, brands can provide scannable codes on their products, and on scanning the code, the customer can avail a certain number of loyalty points. The loyalty points get accumulated on each purchase. When loyalty points reach a certain level, the customer becomes entitled to get a reward from the brand. The reward should be chosen very wisely and should be interesting enough to make the brand the preferred one for the customer. Because of the high adoption of smartphones loyalty programs have become much more effective nowadays. A lot of big brands are utilizing this and are seeing very positive results, some of the NeuroTags clients are seeing enrolment rates of more than 20%. Gamification for sales automation with Exciting offers Gamification can be extended to reach out to the existing customers with new product lines, or in case of consumable products reach out to the consumer towards the end of the lifecycle of the current product with discounts or offers. Based on the customers’ buying patterns brands can pick the products and can reach out to the customers with special discounts on them. Clubbed with the e-commerce facility, automation has the potential to increase recurring sales significantly. That is why NeuroTags provides out of the box sales automation, and the “buy again” and  “monthly-subscribe” buttons for converting a happy customer into a loyal one. Scratch and win Everyone loves surprises. Brands should use this to make their customers happy. Brands can provide scratch and win offers and loyalty points to their customers with the help of digital technology. The possibilities are endless, and gamification of consumer engagement with digital innovation is the future. Businesses must adopt these technologies and connect with their offline consumers to stay in the competition.